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Miner's Gems and Minerals

A family rock and fossil emporium in Old Town since 1978

Where
2616 San Diego Avenue, Old Town San Diego State Historic Park, San Diego, California 92110
Sells
San Diego County tourmaline, California minerals and gold specimens, gemstones and cabochons, meteorites and tektites, fossils (shark teeth, ammonites, trilobites, Green River fish, dinosaur bone), Arizona petrified wood, jewelry and books
Phone
(619) 688-1178
Open
Sunday to Thursday 10 am to 6 pm; Friday and Saturday 10 am to 7 pm, depending on customers; closed Thanksgiving and Christmas
Orders
In the store; call to ask about specific pieces
Since
1978
Run by
The third generation of the same family

Old Town San Diego rock and fossil shop since 1978, with San Diego tourmaline

Shop with a storefront

In San Diego, California.

What they sell: Mineral specimens · Fossils · Meteorites · Petrified wood

minersgemsandminerals.com ↗

Where to use your gear near San Diego

15 gem and mineral spots on open public land with no claim on record, within 50 miles.

Nearest open public land on our fossil and meteorite map: about 118 miles away.

There are more on the map, some of them with a possible mining claim.

Open the gem and mineral map around San Diego →See the nearest open land on the fossil and meteorite map →

Prospecting and collecting rules in California →

About Miner's Gems and Minerals

Miner's Gems and Minerals is a rock and fossil shop inside Old Town San Diego State Historic Park, on San Diego Avenue near the junction of Interstates 5 and 8. It was established in 1978 and says it is still owned and run by one family, now in its third generation, with staff trained in gemology, mineralogy and paleontology. It also takes care to say it has no link with other stores called Miner's Gems in Alaska, Las Vegas, the Bahamas or the Virgin Islands: Old Town is its only location.

The local stone here is tourmaline. One page of the site is devoted to crystals from San Diego County, most of them from the Himalaya mine and the Stewart mine in the north of the county, with a few from the K.C. Naylor mine in the Pala district. A set of pencil tourmalines from San Diego mines, collected before the Second World War, stays on permanent display in the store. The site recalls that the Himalaya was discovered in 1898 and that Empress Dowager Cixi of China bought its pink tourmaline in quantity. Other California material on the shop's list includes kunzite, lepidolite, garnet, benitoite, gold specimens and Morgan Hill poppy jasper.

Meteorite collectors will find Canyon Diablo from Arizona and Sikhote-Alin, with moldavite and Libyan Desert Glass among the tektites; the shop asks people to call about moldavite, which it says sells fast. The fossils run from megalodon and other shark teeth to Green River fish, Utah trilobites, Arizona petrified wood, woolly mammoth hair and ammonites, and the fossils page has offered pieces such as the neck vertebra of an Allosaurus, likely a juvenile, from the Morrison Formation of Colorado. Old mining gear is on show in the store, from carbide lamps and an ore car to a canary cage and blasting cap boxes.

Mineral and fossil panning is offered to families, school groups and travelers. The shop runs it every day, with the last panner at 4 pm; a session takes 15 to 30 minutes and you keep what you wash out. The pans are loaded by the shop with a mix of stones such as tiger eye, jaspers, agates, amethyst, fluorite and pyrite, so what you find was brought in, not dug in Old Town. Groups must book at least two weeks ahead.

One rule to know before bringing in a find of your own: the store does not authenticate, evaluate or appraise meteorites, gold specimens or diamonds.

Clubs and places nearby

Other shops and gear makers nearby

Access

Storefront at 2616 San Diego Avenue in Old Town San Diego State Historic Park, open every day from 10 am; closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day.

Sources